Remember the DART mission where NASA intentionally crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in 2022?
The target was Dimorphos, a small moon orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos. The impact successfully shortened Dimorphos’ orbit by about 33 minutes, which was the main goal.
But new analysis suggests the collision also slightly altered the entire asteroid system’s orbit around the Sun.
The change is tiny (around 0.15 seconds in orbital period), but it’s measurable. Basically, by hitting Dimorphos we gave the whole Didymos system a microscopic shove through space.
It’s a pretty cool proof of concept for planetary defense.
If we ever detect an asteroid heading toward Earth far enough in advance, even a small push like this could be enough to make it miss us.
by JackyWatl